


The Forest

by NavyGreen



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Bard - Freeform, During The Hobbit, First work - Freeform, Gen, One mention of short violence, mainly pondering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:13:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23169862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NavyGreen/pseuds/NavyGreen
Summary: Bard ponders about Legolas, and how he acts differently from the other Elves.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	The Forest

Legolas was, compared to Men, a stoic creature, as distant as the stars. He was lighter than a feather, quieter than a fox on the prowl. He stood as still a stone sculpture when the wind was right, seeming almost the listen to the whispers of deeds long past. He was the mist over the forest in late winter, the dew on the grass, snow along the walls.

The first time Bard had met him was during one of his barrel jobs. There, Legolas had watched, as still as the trees around him. Watching. Watching Bard with grey eyes and unknowable intent.

Bard, while use to the Wood-elves of Mirkwood, had hastily roped the barrels in and rowed right back down the river to the Long Lake.

The ground, at that moment, had felt sacred. Not like church, where he and the children gathered their best clothes and sung hymns – but rather, like when he rowed through the ruins of old; large, stone structures that rose from the water with their builders long dead and long forgotten. A sense of the ancient, perhaps. Of wonder and fear and distrust.

The second time Bard had met him, had been in Laketown. While it burnt and broke under the breath of a dragon.

Wonder. Fear. Distrust.

Calculated and perfect motions as he cut off one Orc head. Then another. Never stopping; never pausing. Never stumbling over the slick floorboards and flinching away from the bodies that littered them.

Afterward, while Bard had huddled with his children, clothes covered in ash and much and whatever else, with his hair clumped and eyes dark, the Wood Elf had stood by, talking to another in low tones. Perfect. Untouched by the devastation around him.

A distant, ever-watching star.

To the Elves, Legolas was an immature, spontaneous, trouble-child. He leapt from too-high of trees, snuck in a blow with his sword where a misstep could’ve meant death. He spoke too often and too loudly, upon carefully laid matters too old for him. He looked far beyond the borders of Mirkwood, with eyes seeing past the Elvish yard into lands unknown to his hands and feet.

Or, at least that was what the Elves Bard had met had told him.

Bard wasn’t quite sure he believed it. The youngest Elf there was, some informed him with soft smiles or annoyed grimaces. And yet centuries older than Bard.

Surely there must be another, he often thought late at night, when the people of Dale slept yet his piles of problems to address rose high.

Perhaps there was a baby in Mirkwood, or Rivendell, or the other Elven lands far to the west. A little Elfling, in its little Elfling cradle.  
His thoughts found little answers, and he could not find the courage to ask the Elves that now half-occupied the city. A strange barrier prevented his asking; one of unknown boundaries. There was no real reason to know; just curiosity.

But now that Bard was both more aquatinted with Legolas, the more familiar with the daily culture of the Wood Elves, he began to notice the difference.

While the Elves stood in perfectly formed lines, with their shields raised to the same height and the notes of the Elvish flute played to the exact same timing and tone every morning, Legolas stood off the side, humming a tune that sounded vaguely familiar to that of a Laketown pub song. While some Elves greeted the Men in Elvish and protected the distance between them, Legolas gave a nod, a small smile, and walked alongside them.

The Elves ate by themselves – if at all. Legolas made an effort to appear at the daily mealtimes, handing out hot broth and soup to those nearest the back of the lines.

Legolas was neither Manish or Elvish, it seemed.

He reminded Bard of the forest – distant and dangerous until one knew its paths, its produce and its culture. Dangerous still – of course, ever so. But one also saw the layers past its closest trees, into what made it unique to the other forests and groves.  
To Bard, Legolas was the apple of Greenwood the Great. The mist and the berries and the spiders and the silent night – all of it.

And while no one could ever really know a forest, know all its intricacies and hidden secrets, one could almost understand it.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this work, check out my new "Music of the Lake" work! It can be seen as a prequel to this.


End file.
